Our planet is dying and it’s because of the fishing industry
We hear and read news about air and water pollution, oil spills, but we ignore them mainly because we do not know how we can contribute to solve it.
Why oceanic pollution is the biggest concern of all
We seldom talk about it. A big chunk of the people do not live near oceans so it’s hidden from us. And thus we care not to know how it affects us and our Pale Blue Dot. Oceans have a lot of contributions towards ecology of our world. A few of the main ones are:
- Oceanic phytoplanktons contribute more than 50% of world’s breathable oxygen. They literally give us half of our life. Due to the ocean pollution, they’re dying at an alarming rate.
- The ocean is the biggest carbon sink on the planet and it’s because of the marine life it contains. 93% of world’s CO2 is stored in the ocean with the help of marine vegetations like corals, algae, sea grass. And loosing 1% of this ecosystem means emissions equal to 97 million cars.
Biggest contributor to ocean pollution
Big organisations like FMCGs make (force) us to believe that replacing plastic straws with organic ones will solve a big chunk of the problem. Plastic straws are not the only problem or they’re the smallest of our concerns. They consists of 0.03% of the total ocean plastic pollution.
The biggest contributors to oceanic pollution are the fishing ships and trawlers. You would be amazed to know that fishing gear, including nets, and other pollutant from these ships and trawlers consists of 46% of the total ocean plastic pollution.
Bad practices of Fishing industry
Nearly 40% of the total catch gets dumped back into the ocean as by-catch. These mostly include sharks, turtles and manta. And they’re dead even before they hit the ocean water. This leads to ecological imbalance in oceans leading to over-population and endangerment of different species.
5 million oceanic fish are killed every single minute. This leads to approximately 2.7 trillion tons of fish being killed every year.
Every year 25million acres of forest is lost due to forestation and jungle fire, while at the same time we lose 3.9 billion acres of sea vegetation by bottom trawlers. These vegetations help keep our environment breathable by absorbing carbon produced by land (industry and animal farming).
Is there any hope?
It took around 100 years to remove Lead from petrolium, because certifying organisations and scientists were lobbying with big organisations to prove that it’s not harmful for us. But we do not have 100 years if we want to protect our oceans, many marine life is already declined by 99%. We have to act now.
There’s an NGO Sea-Shepherd who tracks down ships and trawlers who are involved in illegal fishing. Here’s what we can do to contribute
- Reduce consumption of sea-food.
- Reduce plastic waste.
- Raise awareness by watching documentaries like Seaspiracy.
- Enable NGOs like Sea-Shepherd by donating to this cause.
